Rough Tides

Chapter 8

Sometimes there are really awkward things that could happen to you in your life and most of the time you don't even know if it's real or not. But in that minute I talked to Ryan I knew I couldn't have imagined all that stuff even though it felt pretty unreal. I mean, his cellphone number lied right in front of me.

"He must have been kidding, right?" Joey wanted to know.

I've always been bad at guessing how people feel but Joey looked awful. As though he was sad. Though, I didn't know why. He seemed really happy just a few minutes ago but right after Ryan came here, he looked at me like something has gone terribly wrong. He stared at his feet.

"No, I don't think he was." I said and smiled at him, happily.

I saved Ryan's number to my contacts and threw the piece of paper into the trashbin, then got back to talk to Joey, who still looked pretty upset.

"So, um, how old are you?"

"Seriously? Are you serious, Jenna?" He looked me right in the eye and I had to make a few steps back because that actually scared me a bit. Him, suddenly getting mad at something. At me, to be exact.

I scratched my right arm, like I always did when I got nervous.

Talking about bad habits:

- I always bit my lip if I was put in an awkward situation

- I usually stared at the ground when I was scared/ nervous or anything like that

- I often tried to change the subject when something was getting kind of embarrassing for me

"I just wanted to know... how old you were. What's wrong with that?" I blinked a few times.

Joey took a deep breath and he also folded his arms across his chest.

"You just met Ryan a few minutes ago which is fine, but he gave you his number and to me it seemed like you'd have wanted to jump into his arms and kiss him until the day ends. To be honest, that's weird according to the fact that you haven't known him for very long. The point is, I personally think you should never call Ryan because he seems like a bad guy and I don't want to know how many girls he has hooked up with so far. FOR FUN. Frankly, he doesn't seem like the relationship-type-boy."

Now, this made me laugh. It made me laugh really hard.

The second Joey turned around and was about to walk away, doing whatever he wanted to do, I realized that he was being serious. Surprisingly, I managed to open my mouth and talk.

"Wait!" I screamed and pretty much everyone in the room turned around and stared at me. I ignored them, though. I didn't understand his change of moods because in my opinion, I haven't done anything wrong. I talked to Ryan, that's about it. Okay, well, he wanted me to call him. That must have ticked him off. Still, I don't get why he would start being angry at me just because I had a little conversation with a boy I've never seen before (who was, adding to that, extremely good-looking).

Joey stopped. I walked up to him. Then, I smiled.

"Why do you even care?" I narrowed my eyes and swallowed.

"I don't want him to do anything bad to you, you know." He said.

He was literally staring at me the whole time. Why did he do that? Honestly, it scared me when people did that.

"It's not like he's going to rape me, ya know."

"How can you be so sure about that?" He was still staring at me. I rolled my eyes and put both of my hands on his shoulders. I took a breath.